I bet they decided to crash their skin market in part because too many people were exploiting the Steam Deck loophole to take the skin money out of the system.

Now people will need to give Steam real money to buy their new devices.

Really I think it was otherwise. Dropping prices mean that more transactions happen on their market place. And them selling games or hardware allows them to realise their liabilities as my understanding is that money in wallet on Steam is not yet revenue.

Maybe, but I also think it was just a dangerous situation for them to be in for no benefit. Teenangers dumping all their money in to skins because tiktok "investors" told them to, and then trading them on sketchy 3rd party marketplaces both exposes them to risk of regulators cracking down, and doesn't make them much profit.